The South West Townships
During my twelve hour layover in Johannesburg, I took a tour of Soweto. Johannesburg’s sprawling South West Townships are home to mile after mile of squatter settlements, interspersed with bleak former all-male mine workers’ hostels from which families were forbidden, new government-constructed houses, and the occasional middle class neighborhood. We visited one neighborhood with shabby tin-roofed shacks stretching along a dusty one lane road as far as the eye could see. In the road a dead rat was covered in flies. The guide showed us inside one of the one-room shacks. The tiny space contained a stove, a countertop, a dresser, a bed, and enough floor space for a small mattress. The woman of the house said she shared the house with her four grand daughters. She said she had been living in the house for thirteen years. Every year the government tells her she will be able to move into one of the millions of new government houses being built, and every year she continues to wait.
